IN BRIEF:

Age is just a number

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Heera Nawaz, Sep 14, 2014,

Sep 13 2014, 22:21pm ist

updated: Sep 13 2014, 22:21pm ist

It is an undeniable and irrefutable fact that one’s age plays a vital and crucial role in one’s everyday life transactions. Almost everything that one does is analysed, evaluated and judged by taking into consideration this all-important yardstick.

Yes, indeed, the chronological age of a person is the major criterion and parameter by which one’s maturity, abilities and wisdom are assessed. In fact, so important is age that for every school admission, parents must show their ward’s birth certificate and for every job interview, the HRD Department of most companies demand to be shown the potential employee’s Std. X report card, which clearly indicates the candidate’s date of birth from which the age of the candidate can be determined.

It is well known that almost all the major decisions to be taken in life, like entering college, getting a job, getting married, becoming a parent, going abroad, etc., depend on one’s age. This may be the reason why many women are extremely finicky about their age and bluff it since there are so many stakes involved. How true is the maxim, “Never ask a woman’s age; never ask a man’s wage.”

Women lying about their ages are more common among celebrities. They, therefore, endeavour to portray themselves as the ageless, evergreen glamorous divas, like the women in Utopia’s Erewhon who never grow old. Due to this obsession with age-induced youth, they spend colossal sums of money on Botox treatments, anti-wrinkling creams and hair dyes to stall the tell-tale signs of growing old.

However, what is important for women and men, too, is not to let age worries carp and blunt one’s vivacity, zest and enthusiasm for life. Despite the passage of years, it would be prudent for one to understand that everyone will pass through all of life’s phases, childhood, adolescence, youth, middle age and old age, and that therefore they should live each phase with the correct spirit and attitude.

One can do this by realising that life consists of time, and that therefore one should make the most of one’s time by using it constructively and judiciously. Time wasted and misused is time lost forever as it is one resource that cannot be retrieved nor rewound. If one uses one’s time positively, one will not live in one’s twilight years entrenched with regret and remorse.

Indeed, one should try one’s level best to ameliorate the quality of one’s life as, unfortunately, it is not possible to change the quantity or number of years one lives. This is largely a component that, like birth and marriage, is not in one’s hands. One should count not the years of one’s life, but the life in those years. Whenever one gets bugged with the prospect of getting older, one should just recall the following quotation, “Why does age bother you so much? Don’t you know, it’s just a number, baby!”

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